The Richness of Adrian Pucey
by KristieConspiracy
Summary: Misanthropic, unwanted, but has depths beyond anything anyone would expect. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to meet Adrian Pucey. Written for Fire the Canon's Character of the Week Drabble Competition, prompt: Adrian Pucey.
1. Trust Issues

**Challenge: **Fire the Canon's _Character of the Week Drabble Competition (week 2)_, on HPFC  
Cheeky Slytherin Lass's _Fanfiction Scavenger Hunt Competition_, on HPFC

**Characters: **Adrian Pucey

**Prompt:** Must be written in first person.  
This entire drabble set is for prompt _8. A drabble collection of 5, all less than 500 words._

**Word count:** 200

**A/N: **It's up to you whether or not Adrian's a muggleborn or half-blood, but he's pessimistic so assumes he's a _mudblood_. His muggle mother panicked when he turned out to be a 'freak', abandoning him, and he ended up in an orphanage in muggle London. There, for whatever reason, he was found and adopted by a pureblood couple, the Pucey family, who drilled ideas of blood supremacy into him from birth. No surprise that he's so negative about himself.

* * *

I'd always hated my name. _Adrian_. What a delightfully _muggle_ name.

I hated it even more when I got my letter for Hogwarts just after my eleventh birthday. _Dear Mr Pucey_, it said, like a badge of shame. It was like this _McGonagall_ was pointing at me, laughing: _ha, ha, Adrian Pucey, what a muggle piece of trash_.

Oh, I knew that wasn't it at all. I knew she couldn't _possibly_ know that I was a _mudblood_, a piece of refuse clinging to the shoe that was my pureblood adoptive parents. My muggle mother had been disgusted with my random acts of magic as a toddler, and off she'd shipped me to some orphanage in London, disposing of me as she would a broken glass.

I knew I'd changed after that. _Betrayal mid-childhood will ruin the child for trusting anyone_. Well, whoever decided that was right: muggles were filth, never to be trusted, no matter right. My magical new parents weren't much better, they probably weren't even_ real_ purebloods. _Pucey_ certainly wasn't in the Sacred Twenty-Eight.

The only people worth trusting, I decided while watching the purebloods _real_ child sleep the night before I left for Hogwarts, were the children.


	2. Lesson Learned

**Challenge: **Fire the Canon's _Character of the Week Drabble Competition (week 2)_, on HPFC

**Characters: **Adrian Pucey, unnamed Slytherin and Hufflepuff OC

**Prompt:** Must involve Hogsmeade in some way

**Word Count: **200

* * *

Adrian didn't really look forward to Hogsmeade trips, unlike his classmates. It was the magical community: he hated it. All these ridiculous former students who were so low in self-confidence that they felt the need to hang around after graduation, to live vicariously through the hundreds of current students.

Of course, he was highly misanthropic and seemed to hate everyone. So when, in fifth year, he volunteered to help the third years to make it there and back safely, no one really knew what to think.

Outside Zonko's joke shop around one, he stumbled, for his first time as a student, on someone being picked on. Some low-life fourth year Slytherin - _from my own house!_, he fumed - was threatening a harmless Hufflepuff.

Well, that disgusted Adrian. Maybe he terrified some of his peers. Yes, he seemed to hate everyone for no apparent reason. What he _really_ hated, though, were bullies. It probably had something to do with exposure to muggles and pureblood supremacists.

"What," he said, in a dangerous voice, "are you doing?"

The Slytherin smirked. He didn't realise his mistake.

By the end of the day, Adrian was banned from Hogsmeade trips, and everyone knew the mistake.


	3. Heavy Hearted

**Challenge: **Fire the Canon's _Character of the Week Drabble Competition_ on HPFC

**Characters: **Adrian Pucey, OC (Saffron Pucey, Mr and Mrs Pucey)

**Word count: **200

**A/N: **Fire the Canon pointed out that it's a bit unclear who Saffron is. Here's the explanation:  
The purebloods adopted him because they had recently lost their own biological sickly son, the same age as Adrian, who had rarely been seen. They couldn't be called on the lie that Adrian wasn't 'really' theirs. When Adrian was 6, the Pucey's had a daughter, who they named Saffron. She was healthy until shortly after she turned 4 (Adrian being 10), at which point she was revealed to have some potentially terminal muggle disease (in my mind it's a type of cancer, though it's up to you).

* * *

His heart was in his throat; it was never a good thing when the Headmaster removed you from your classes and sent you out of school. It said you were beyond trouble.

He stepped out of the fireplace and into the arms of the witch who called herself his mother, a woman usually flat and emotionless, completely stoic.

A woman who was weeping.

That meant one thing, and one thing only, and that thought dropped his heart from his throat. He felt it pass his chest end somewhere far below his feet.

"S-Saffron," the witch sobbed, clinging to him. His adopted father, behind her, bowed his head as if in mourning.

"No," Adrian breathed, horrified. "You told her she wouldn't."

"We had to," said the wizard, and Adrian couldn't find it in him to be mad about the lie.

"Did she ask for me?"

"Every day. She didn't understand..."

"You should have sent for me. _I_ would have understood. I _wanted_ to see her. Don't you see that? She means more than either of you. She's a _child_."

"And now she's gone."

And she was. Little pureblood Saffron Pucey was gone, dead to a muggle disease that nothing could cure.


	4. Every Love Story

**Challenge: **Fire the Canon's _Character of the Week Drabble Competition (week 2)_, on HPFC

**Characters:** Adrian Pucey, OC (Lauren Smith)

**Prompt: **Beyonce's _Love on Top_

**Word count: **200

**A/N:** Inspired by several lines of the song, which I don't like at all:  
_"I can see stars all the way from here/Can't you see the glow on the window pane?"  
"Every time you touch me I just melt away."  
"You're the one that gives your all/You're the one I can always call/When I need you make everything stop."_

This was originally going to be romance, but it became more about what he does for work - he works with children who are sick and dying, trying to comfort them as best he can - than about potential romance between him and 'Miss Smith'. So there.

* * *

Adrian smiled to himself, closing the book. It was a muggle love story, but he didn't mind. It was the little girls' favourite. She reminded him of Saffron, like all the sick kids he worked with. He would move mountains for any of them, if they asked.

If only he could make them better.

"I can see the stars from here."

He jumped up quickly, careful not to wake the now sleeping child. "What do you want?"

"To compliment you, Mr Pucey. You - you really give them everything."

He recognised the woman now. She was a muggle, maybe old enough to be in university. She had a sadness about her that was ethereal, a sadness he knew. She'd lost someone recently. Judging by the hand on her stomach, a child. And he knew the child - Lucas Smith. A muggle boy. Two. Died as a result of cystic fibrosis.

"No need, Miss Smith," he said, approaching her. "I work here for them. Not for thanks."

"You lost someone. We can depend on you."

"Yes." He didn't explain further. He had no chance, distracted as she took and kissed his hand.

"Please don't go." She was beginning to cry.

"Okay."


	5. All Your Demons

**Challenge: **Fire the Canon's _Character of the Week Drabble Competition (week 2)_, on HPFC

**Characters:** Adrian Pucey, Hannah Abbott (mentioned), OC (Lauren Smith, Saffron Pucey II, Jordanne Pucey, Lucas Pucey)

**Prompt: **Must contain a romantic relationship

**Word count: **200

* * *

"I can't keep doing this."

Adrian reached for her hand, holding it tightly in his own, and kissing it gently. "You can, Lauren."

"This is a world I don't belong in, Adrian!"

He kissed her cheek next. "And how would you go about explaining it? 'Sorry, but I'm afraid of the world you both belong in'?"

"No," Lauren sighed sadly, tugging feebly on a long blond ringlet. He brushed his thumb over one of her freckled cheeks and smiled softly.

"If you don't belong here, love, than neither do I."

She looked at him, horrified. "But you're a wizard!"

"My biological family were all muggles. According to the people who raised me, I don't belong here anymore than you."

She bit her lip, looking around the interior of the pub quickly, then kissed him on the mouth. "This place _is _nicer than it used to be."

"A Hufflepuff bought it off Tom. She doesn't know how to be creepy."

She finally smiled, squeezing his hand. "Okay, I'm ready. Saffron, Jordanne, Lucas, we're going!"

Their three children appeared, smiling innocently. Why they bothered, Adrian didn't know - it wasn't like it wasn't obvious the little witches were tormenting poor Hannah Abbott.


End file.
